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There are a few tiny changes I made since the version I showed you yesterday.
I’ve detached the leaves that were on the front cover as the material was a bad choice, they had started to fray because they get a lot of handling. I changed them for felt versions which won’t fray. I also made them slightly bigger and they cover the dragonfly button better, it did have a tendency to peak out! I also used my markers to colour the viliene sign into a better approximation of the real thing. I like it with a blue background much better!
Now a quick run through of the finished book!
Cover – “lift the flap” leaves and an opening door with a tiny vicar behind it. Original title page post here.finger puppets page

The next two pages form a double page spread, the “dress the vicar” pages. Details here.

The next two pages feature a ringing bell (not so quiet!) and praying hands. Both pages here.

The next page features the inside of the church and a host of adorable finger puppets. For a closer look at these characters look here.

The baptism page has a jointed arm and can be found here, as can the button flower page. In the next spread. Eagle eyed readers may have noticed one of the buttons was missing but this has been fixed!

The communion page has broken bread which poppers on and off, this jigsaw is surprisingly difficult! Full details can be found here as can the information on the last spread, a colouring page based on the Sunday school.

The back cover is repurposed denim, this lends a bit of structure to the colouring page which is the heaviest page due to the notebook.

And that’s it! Stay tuned for the little dedication I’ll be adding but the book is out in the church and has been since Easter, where it went down well with some of the smaller members of the service who it entertained throughout. Success!

Okay so this has been much delayed but this post is all about how to put together the final church quiet book. Originally I had planned to use book rings but eventually I decided that the less bits that could be lost the better, and since the book would be in a public place I chose to sew the pages together.

To start with I laid all the pages out in order. When deciding the order I tried to make sure bulky pages didn’t end up back to back.

Take any loose parts you can detach and put them to one side so they don’t get in the way. Here you can see my poor finger puppets scattered across the carpet.

Taking the two pages which will end up back to back, place them right sides together.

Pin around the edges, you are going the sew round all four sides leaving a gap for turning, as you would for a bean bag.

Sew around the page turning at the corners, and finish with a backstitch for strength.

Clip the corners to reduce the bulk when turning

Then turn the page right sides out through the turning gap.

Use something like a pencil or a knitting needle to push the corners though so your page is nice and square. This should leave you with a finished page.

Ready to put back and small pieces.

Now do the same for all the other pages except the back page.

The back page is constructed exactly the same way but using a piece of soft denim from a pair of worn out jeans. I cut some scrap from the jeans fabric which was approximately 2 inches. The decorative seam of the jeans was on this scrap.

I sewed a line of stitching alongside this seam on the front page of the book. This formed a wraparound spine for the book with the seam along the front.

The seam could be seen once the fabric is folded back to show the right side of the fabric.

To join the back and front cover I pinned the spine piece to the back cover. I then stitched down this join on the reverse of the fabric.

The inner pages were sewn together using a large zig zag stitch. The interior pages were stitched together in this way in twos.

The bundles were then sewn together by running a straight stitch down two pages close to the spine.

This is a pretty standard quit book page but churches always have flowers for special days,

There is loads of fantastic quiet book flowers out there:

1,2 & 5, 3,4, 6
The different versions are all great ideas, like “pick-able” pipe cleaner flowers to put in a vase or button on flowers. I chose to do button flowers for my page with 5 different buttons

The flowers are attached with green ribbon for the stalks, mainly so that the flower heads don’t get lost! They can tuck down in the top of the vase.

My favourite part of this page is the woven apple ribbon round the vase, found in the bargain bin!
The flowers are double sided so you can chose which colours you use.

The second page I want to show you is about baptism, it shows the vicar with a sleepy baby. The baby’s gown is made from a gathered up piece of wide white lace.

The vicars arm is jointed at the elbow with a black button so that he can dip into the font (which is a pocket) and the put the water onto the babies head.

A church is really about the people and not the building and this page shows that. It is modelled on the aisle and alter as you look towards the front of the church.

The pews are pockets in which 6 little finger puppets live. The vicar to hold the service…

The family, mother,father, daughter and son …

B
And a new baby, is it a christening?

The characters are all finished on the back to, do you like the girls little plait?

My favourite of these tiny puppets are defiantly the parents – it’s between the mums pearls and fancy flowery hat and the dads pretty impressive moustache. Which parts do you like best?

Ps general inspiration and finger puppet template from here.
PPS 2 more pages posts to go!
PPPS yesterday day I took the finished article to church with me and gave it over to their care tell you all about it in my wrap up post.

Why hello there! This is part 3 of the church quiet book series of posts, and todays page is a bit simpler. By this point in the process I found this to be a very very good thing!
I thought about calling this post “I find you very a-peel-ing”

This was the last page I did, it was in the original plan but then I couldn’t work out how to do it (it had a complicated buttons and pulley thing going on in my head) so I scrapped it.
How did I finally make it work…

I kept muffling the sound so in the end the bell is just 2 layers of felt, stitched around the edges and left open at the bottom. 2 jingle bells (originally wrapped around a cracker!) we’re attached inside. I also chain stitched the clapper design on the front to make it clear what it’s supposed to be!

It is attached to a button (inside the bell, but it can’t come off) so pulling the cord does make it ring but you have to pull it one way and then the other.

And another very quick page as a bonu

Originally inspired by the robot hand in the Jedi quiet book (by someone who incidentally makes the coolest books EVER!) these praying hands are actually a glove. Too small for my hand but big enough for little hands!

Pages 2 and 3 of my custom church quiet book project. These to pages cover what the vicar wears for the service. I went as a helper on a school trip looking at local history. One of the many local places they visited was the church (they also sent groups to the football stadium, the river, the synagogue and mosque and lots of other places I can’t remember – it was really interesting!) one of the best bits was when the vicar was talking to the kids about the traditions and what he wears. He talked them trough it and dressed up volunteer to demonstrate! These pages are following on from that idea.

It’s a double page spread. Although I had the idea I still got a lot of inspiration form dress up quiet book pages around the web. I placed the vicar on one side of the page and the clothing laid out on the other page.

This is our vicar, I dressed him up in a t shirt and shorts. A standard dress up page is usually underwear but I like this better. The man himself has a beard, can you see the resemblance?

The clothes were embroidered and embellished and fastened to the page with Velcro. The hook part of the Velcro is attached to the piece of clothing as it lets it fasten to the felt I made the Velcro from.

I also outlined the pieces with a large running stitch in brightly coloured floss. Under each I wrote the name of the item in paint marker. I had to look a few of these up!

Our vicar is usually dressed for the family service in a fairly casual manner…

But if you saw him at an event such as Easter, Christmas or christening he’d be wearing the full gear…

One of the trickiest parts to work out was the stole (as it goes behind the neck) but in the end I did it as 2 pieces and the centre is actually fixed to the page

this has been “tested” extensively by the cousins and apparently meets with approval! Success! More pages to come.

We attend the family service at our local church and often we have kids visiting for christening a or church parades. Lots of parents worry about their kids squirming or making a noise (although we really don’t mind!). So when I originally came across the quiet book idea on the Internet I thought it was genius and decided to make one for our service. The church is all ways trying to make people welcome and a “welcome to the church” quiet book seemed like a great idea (read took ages!) so off I went to make a quiet book tailor made to our church. I’m going to post the pages a couple at a time and then hopefully the finished article.

This is our church, St. Mary’s of West Acklam. Sorry for the poor photo, it’s from their website, feel free to pop over and have a look around. The shape of the church from this angle is very familiar to me and the first view you see as you come through the gate so that is we’re I started from.

This was the first page I did and I tried to use up odd little scraps. Later on I stuck more with felt as the edges are easiest to deal with on felt but for this page bondaweb ruled! All through the book I used unbleached muslin pages (30cm x 25cm pages) and iron on vilenle and permanent markers for the text.

I tried to ensure every page had some interactive features. The bush on he left hand side for example has 3 lift-the-flap leaves.

Under each is a cute little animal. I tried different methods here with baring success. The little ladybird was done last and was defiantly the easiest. I just drew him on iron viliene and ironed him on. The dragonfly was easy to (he’s just a novelty button) but isn’t as good because the leaves don’t cover him as well. The little bird is a tiny version of a pattern from the doodle stitching, motif collection. Did you see that Amiee Ray has a new book coming out?

The same iron on drawing method was used for a little vicar to great you as you open the door to the church.

The door was cut from some of that plastic leather stuff which I found in the bargain bin at Boyes. Great because it dozen’t fray! The roof is long stitches top to bottom and then side to side threads woven through. I think this is basket weave stitch but honestly I made it up as I went along so I’m not sure.

The difficult part of recreating a photo or real place is choosing which details should be included and which to leave out. You can see I added the funny trees in the grave yard but only 1 grave stone!

The trees are the same textured fabric as the bush and the grave stone is cream felt. The windows of the church were also trial and error. The one shown above is appliquéd on top of the church building piece and is cut from some shiny, plasticky sort of ribbon I had. The one below was reverse appliquéd (ie the window fabric is underneath and a space is cut in the church building fabric to allow it to show through. The roof is chain stitched.

The page started of with the photograph which I traced for the main parts of the church. Once these were attached a large piece of green fabric was added and then the details hand sewn on top. You could use this idea to make all sorts of custom locations for all sorts of projects. I might do my house one day!